Some of the major players in the smart home space, up until now, have been offering their best solutions for a variety of different user needs and requirements. However, they relied on their own standards for communication, which, in turn, left some of the smaller players in the industry to choose sides. Not to mention, the other caveat/shortcoming with this approach, which prevents smart home devices of different brands from communicating together in a smart home ecosystem. The new open standard, Connected Home over IP, is a royalty-free connectivity standard that relies on Internet Protocol (IP), which Google has been using on its Nest thermostat since 2011. Using IP ensures an end-to-end, private, and secure communication between different smart devices, mobile phones, and related cloud services. Not to mention, a defined specific set of networking technologies (based on IP) for device certification. With the new open standard protocol, the group welcomes device manufacturers and developers in the smart home industry to participate and contribute to the royalty-free standard. On the other hand, the end-user gets the freedom to decide how they want to control their smart devices, irrespective of the smart home technology that they use.
